The Shapeshifter Connection
by nimnitzle
Summary: X and Axl investigate the Spider/Redips mystery post-Command Mission. Zero learns about the life, death, and imposter of the bounty hunter.


Zero wandered aimlessly through the Far East Maverick Hunter Headquarters. Despite having rested after being picked up from the middle of the ocean alongside his partners X and Axl, Zero's legs felt like lead as he slowly traversed hallways that were under repair. The S-ranked Hunter could always be counted on to do what needed to be done in the heat of the moment. It was the time afterward, in the after of the chaos he had contributed to that troubled him.

 _Spider was Redips all along. He betrayed us. I trusted him. Betrayed again. Shadow. Spider… Sigma…_

Zero drifted into a wall. Paying attention to his surroundings for the first time in twenty minutes, he noticed he was in the room where Depth Dragoon had attacked his team. Massimo, Marino, and Cinnamon had challenged the rouge Hunter so that Zero, X, and Axl could stop Redips. The Giga City natives had defeated Depth Dragoon, although Zero had yet to learn what had become of them after that. The old Hunter had doubted them and regretted voicing those doubts in the manner he had. But they had all proven themselves, especially little Cinnamon.

"Commander Zero, would you please vacate the premises?" A voice cut through Zero's line of thought.

Zero raised his head to the humanoid speaking to him, a Maverick Hunter engineer whose name Zero did not know. He didn't know anyone in the room and they were all staring at him.

"We need to repair and renovate," the Reploid of an unknown name explained.

Zero blinked and responded, "Yeah, okay." He left the room realizing he would like to see a familiar face, not in the meaning of a generic Reploid face. He could always talk to X, couldn't he?

 _I was a jerk to X._

Nevertheless he began drifting to places his friend could be. He eventually found X, and Axl, in the computer room discussing something and occasionally marking on a holoboard. Zero entered the room without announcing himself and looked at the holoboard that held writing and images.

Redips. It was about Redips and Spider. There was also a picture of another Reploid, one Zero had never seen before.

"What's this for?" He asked warily.

Axl jumped in surprise and even X looked startled.

"We were just finishing investgat-" X began.

"Jeez, Zero! Knock!" Axl admonished, attempting to regain some measure of dignity after being caught off guard.

"-gating the Redips/Spider connection," X finished.

Irritated, Zero responded, "Spider was Redips. He played us from the start. Case closed." The red hunter did not want to hear about Spider. He had begun to trust Spider, with the bounty hunter's sacrifice giving him reason to work with X, Axl, and the Resistance, until he revealed he was never dead. Then Zero made sure he was very dead.

"Zero! You're forgetting a key point. If Redips was Spider, then who was Spider?" Axl piped up.

In response to the look of bewilderment the older hunter gave the younger one, X explained, "Redips was a shapeshifter meaning the form of Spider had to originally belong to someone else."

"Could the Spider form have been his true one?"

"No," Axl said, shaking his head, "He died in his true form. Taking that much damage would force his to take his true from. It's happened to me, y'know."

The red hunter nodded. Axl had become experienced enough that it was a rare occurrence, but in the early days he had seen Axl hit hard enough to knock the shift out of him.

"Alright then. What is the Redips/Spider connection?"

X answered, " From the research we've done and with Axl's understanding of copy-chip Reploids we found that Redips and Spider were brothers built by a smaller company to showcase what they were capable of producing."

"Meaning Spider being spelled backwards as Redips wasn't some wild coincidence," Axl added.

X continued, " Spider was meant to showcase a unique weapon system while Redips was meant to be tactical minded and be able to command mechanaloids. Neither was built for a specific purpose so they chose their own. Spider, a bounty hunter, and Redips, a Maverick Hunter."

Redips, thanks to his tactical mind and leadership capabilities had risen through the ranks quickly. He had no combat experience, as was fairly evident in the battle that ended in his death. The maverick had power but no control or experience with it. And in Zero's life, the best fighters were not the ones with the most power but the ones with the most good sense. While Redips had fought fine in Spider's body, he was using a body that had fought before, unlike his own.

"Both were interested in copy chips and went to Lagrano Labs to become copy chip Reploids. At Lagrano they appear to have been experimenting with mixing copy chips and force metals. However, not all Reploids can handle force metals very well. Redips was successfully turned into a shapeshifter while Spider…" X trailed off for a moment, "His systems were fired leaving his mind fractured and taking his ability to walk or even move his face."

Zero grimaced. Ruined systems could not always be recovered.

"Spider lived but permanent changes were made to his structure so that he could function. After that he took a new name, Aile, and started working for Chief R." X gestured at the picture of the unfamiliar Reploid. Before Zero could ask, X explained that Aile had died near the beginning of the Maverick Hunters involvement in the conflict and was the reason that 'Spider' had joined the Resistance."

"Redips used his own brother's DNA for awful purposes," Axl commented, "While he used the interference to play around with us. If we could've gotten in contact with base sooner, as in not Redips, we could've stopped him from taking it any further and transforming into that…that…thing."

The pieces of the puzzle had come together. Now that it was clear what had happened, Zero felt at ease about the most recent conflict. No, almost at ease. "What happened to the others? Cinnamon, Marino, Massimo."

"Cinnamon is in Giga City with Professor Gaudile, she intends to study force metals. Massimo is here, he intends to become a Maverick Hunter to protect others. As for Marino…" X trailed off.

"She's interested in copy chips. I'd better warn her about what could happen. It's kinda a pity that the Rebellion wrecked Lagrano Labs. Now I have no more clues about finding where I came from," Axl mused with a bit of impatience.

"Thanks," Zero said and left his fellow hunters, no, his friends with more energy that he had had before.


End file.
